I Whisper as I Hear Him Sleep by Janna Wagner

I Whisper as I Hear Him Sleep

nonfiction by Janna Wagner

, the world is bigger than this.

I think of the desert, the coast of Maine. Juneau.

This is the time before.

I feel my face with my fingers. I am here.

“I can’t be here for you,” he said. (I had just come back from a war; from bodies and

bullets and invisible wounds). “My father is dying.”

“Ok,” I said. And never forgave it. This was the tip of the first domino.

We are in the middle of falling. Still making love. Still making plans. A woman is

done long before she tells you. She wants it to be you, so bad, that the part who stays

thinks it’s winning the fight. Only at the last moment, only at twilight, always

without warning, a surprise to no one and to everyone, leaving wins.

Somewhere lives souls that just love, hand to heart, eyes to eyes, breath to breath.

I turn my face; his hands trace my hips. He is happy. Across the world, thousands of

other women are curled on their sides too, saying « I’m fine » to cover the breaking. I try

hard not to think of the one I love. The one who claws at me and I moan for him and

we are lost. Pressing cheek to cheek, pressing (what is love if not the anguished

pressing?). He didn’t pick me.

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I lie beside a good, kind man, who strokes my hair when I cannot sleep, and think of how

I must not love him. Stop it! you are lucky. I think of how I recoil from the tone of his

voice when he whispers the hurts of his heart. How I must be a hard, over-boiled woman.

Full of sinew and elbows. Viper. Shrew. Forgive me. I long for the one I love. Stop it.

you made the healthy choice.

I think of the soft underbelly of my bicep, a magical ample place, and think of how, in

the race with the worm for the apple, we lose. It occurs to me I may have serious

depression. Or is longing simply human, inextricably tied with being a person in the

world?

"I love you," I say. I am always the last to sleep. I sigh into the night. Relief. Try not to

cry, try not to think of him, try not to imagine getting in the truck one day and just

driving. A different life is always just minutes away. Forgive me. Even though my wet

cheeks are chubby and even though I’m losing the war with time, I long for the desert,

the coast of Maine. Juneau. The world is bigger than this, I whisper as I hear him sleep.

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